Tomb Raider: Pick Your Poison
by Jedd the Jedi
Summary: At an excavation in the inhospitable Miraha desert, Lara Croft is poisoned and forced to play a deadly game - if she loses, the body of Emperor Miraha ends up on the antiquities black market - and she dies. Written for a competition on tombraiderforums.


Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Pick Your Poison

By Jedd Jong 28/2/10

A lone scorpion scuttled across the coarse sand of the Miraha Desert, scrambling to shelter as fast as its eight legs could carry it. Lara Croft's gaze followed the creature and thought it might be wise to do the same. It was, in a word, hot, even for a Miraha day. Lara had insisted on trekking on foot and was beginning to regret the decision. She had also insisted on going alone, as she often did. The sun beat down upon her and Lady Lara Croft was quickly reminded that the sun was no respecter of social status. She unscrewed the cap of her canteen and took her first swig of the day. She savoured the clear, refreshing taste of lemon-lime Lucozade. However, there came with it an odd bitter aftertaste. Lara paused. She took another sip. And another. Then, she began to gasp. It hit Lara like the sunlight had just a while ago.

She had been poisoned.

Lara instinctively took the bottle and stared into it with trepidation. The welcome sound of the liquid sloshing about in its container had now become painful and sickening. There was something else, something solid in the bottle. Lara poured the contents of the canteen onto the sand. Some of the liquid turned to steam in a flash. A small object fell out of the container after it was empty of liquid. Lara stooped down to pick it up. It was a flash drive, except half of it had contained a liquid-no doubt the poison. Half memory-storage device, half-time release capsule. "Bloody hell", Lara muttered to herself.

She could feel her heart pounding. Lara took off her backpack and quickly fumbled inside it for her handheld computer. "Come on," she urged as the computer booted up. With shaking hands-from fear or the poison, she could not tell-Lara inserted the flash drive into the computer's USB port. An audio file began to play.

"Hello, Lady Croft," the voice began. It had been digitally distorted. "As you have probably gathered, you have been poisoned."

"Damn right I have..." Lara said with gritted teeth.

"I like a good game," the voice continued. "You have 24 hours to live, from the time you have ingested the substance. I have hidden the antidote in the tomb of Emperor Miraha."

"Of course," Lara said to herself. The only reason to visit the god-forsaken desert was the tomb of its namesake. The tomb had been the stuff of legend until Lara and her team had excavated it only a month earlier. They had only unearthed several chambers, and apparently that was all there was to the tomb.

"You're probably thinking: what is the point of all this? As I said earlier, I just like a good game, and who better to play with than Lady Lara Croft herself? If you find the antidote before you...expire, you've won. Don't worry, it's a good challenge."

Lara froze as the audio clip ended. She struggled to think straight. She reached for her radio and dialled the base camp. A man answered. "Hello?"

"Dan! Dan, pick me up now. You know the location."

"Lara? I'm picking it up now...what's the emergency?"

"Nothing important," Lara replied.

The jeep tore across the desert, headed back for the camp. Dan was at the wheel, Lara sat beside him, clearly troubled. "Lara, what's going on?" Dan inquired. Lara remained silent. "Seriously, you look ill. Is it the heat?

"Yes, it's a hot day." Lara replied.

"Go get some rest when we reach base camp okay? You can use the trailer..."

Lara kept silent.

They reached the camp. Lara stumbled out of the jeep, disoriented. Instead of heading to the trailer, she went for the well. At least, it appeared to be a well. It was in fact the entrance to the tomb of Emperor Miraha. There was a ladder that led down, but Lara instead lowered herself into the well using her grappling hook. It was faster, and time was of the essence. Lara reached the base of the well. There was a crawlspace that led to the main chamber. Lara proceeded. The crawlspace was unforgivingly narrow. It began to spin around her, but she pressed on. After what seemed like ages, she finally emerged in the main chamber.

The chamber was lit with portable lighting rigs that had been painstakingly carried down into it. A member of the expedition, Zack, was in the main chamber, surveying the tomb with a handheld device. "Hey Lara," Zack smiled. Lara turned to him and nodded. She briefly considered telling him what was going on, but instead proceeded beyond the main chamber, into the next room.

The next room was the burial chamber, decorated with murals telling the story of Emperor Miraha's colourful life and times. In the centre was the sarcophagus containing the body of the Emperor- The Emperor's remains were contained in a smaller sarcophagus inside, and this had already been transported up to base camp and would be flown any time now to the British Museum to be examined. There had been a small battle with the local officials over whose property the Emperor's remains were, but in the end they had handed it over to the team.

There wasn't very much else to the tomb besides several niches and empty rooms, really, and that was what troubled Lara as she could see no antidote after scouring every corner. She returned to burial chamber and inspected the sarcophagus. Not really knowing what to do, she felt the bare stone of the base of the coffin. "He wants to play games, doesn't he?" Lara thought back to the ancient legend, perhaps that would contain a clue. In the legend, the coffin had no base-so much for that, Lara thought. The Emperor descended straight to the underworld for his soul to be judged, and the sarcophagus was a one-way passage to hell. Lara turned to the mural. One faded picture showed what appeared to be a shaft leading down from the coffin.

All this was too much to process. Lara pushed down on the base of the coffin. Sure enough, she could hear a catch release itself, and the floor of the coffin swung downwards, revealing a seemingly bottomless pit. Lara couldn't help but feel pleased with herself, even though she had yet to find the antidote. She threw a flare into the pit that had just opened up. Surprisingly, it hit the bottom quickly. Using the grapple once again, Lara lowered herself into the coffin and landed on the hard rock below. She looked around and found herself in a cave. Just ahead there were steps leading down. Lara descended the steps and found herself at a stone door. She pushed and it swung open with surprising ease.

Beyond the door was a well-lit room, and at the far end a table covered with bottles. This was it. All of a sudden, a figure stepped out of the shadows. "Well done, Lara. Well done," he intoned.

It was Dan.

Seething with anger, Lara ran up to him and swung her fist at his face with all her might. Her hand passed through Dan, and Lara realised that she was speaking to a hologram.

35 000 feet in the air, in the hold of a cargo plane, Dan continued to speak.

"Lara Croft, you solved the puzzle faster than I expected. But you have yet to win," he said, motioning to the table filled with bottles of all kinds.

"Dan, what's the point in all this?"

Dan put his hands in the air in mock innocence. "First of all, I'm not the mastermind. Nowhere near. Second, this is merely a diversion."

"A diversion?" Then it hit her. "The Emperor's body!"

Dan nodded. "As we speak, the remains of Emperor Miraha are on their way..."

"...to the British Musuem?" Lara asked, still hopeful that all their work had not been wasted.

"No, of course not. It's an undisclosed location."

"You're selling the bloody body on the black market!"

"Easy money," Dan smiled. "By my count, you are left with a generous amount of time before the poison knocks you off. So, to make it a little harder..." Dan waved his hand in the air, and the stone door closed behind Lara. "You find another way out."

Lara turned around and looked in horror as she was sealed into the chamber. "Either way I die," she said, knowing she would not.

"Not necessarily," the holographic figure smiled. "Goodbye anyway," he finished. The figure dematerialized. Lara ran over to inspect the projector that had created the image-there were two lenses, one on the ceiling and one on the floor. They seemed to have been grafted into the chamber with no intention of being removed.

Lara turned her attention to the bottles on the table. It was like a challenge out of a sick reality television show. Go through the bottles and find the one with the antidote inside. Somehow, even this seemed too easy. Lara shone a light through the bottles. Their thin walls betrayed whether there was liquid inside. Problem was, all the bottles were filled to the brim.

Out of frustration, Lara took one of the bottles and smashed them on the floor. She didn't care if it contained the antidote, in that moment nothing much mattered. To her surprise, only the outer layer of the bottle cracked. In between the outer and inner walls, a scroll was rolled around the bottle. Lara unrolled the scroll. Upon it was a symbol. Lara felt even worse than before. This was the symbol of the largest antiquities smuggling ring in the world, the Wu Lang, operated out of China. Lara smashed more bottles and found that all of them contained the scroll. But what was the purpose of this message in a bottle? Lara ran her hand over the paper. It felt granular, almost like powdered paint.

Of course! She opened the cap of one of the bottles and poured the liquid, which appeared to be water, onto the piece of paper. She rubbed the powdery layer off and sure enough there was more beneath. After the top layer had been washed off, Lara was met with a large drawing of a bottle, uniquely-shaped and coloured teal. The text beneath simply read "this one".

Lara ran to the table, sought out the specified bottle, and found it quickly enough. She unscrewed the cap and downed the contents. There was a mildly medicinal taste about the formula, and Lara knew she had found the antidote. "That's one problem dealt with," Lara smiled. Now to find her way out. Lara knew that this whole ordeal was merely a diversion. Dan had no intention of killing her, only keeping her busy. And experience taught her that once she had solved one part of the puzzle, the solutions to the rest would follow naturally.

Still holding the bottle, Lara stepped over to the door. There was what appeared to be a large keyhole in its centre. Lara looked at the top of the bottle, then back at the niche in the door. Could it be? She inserted the bottle into the door. The top fit perfectly. Lara then turned. The door opened up and Lara was halfway to being home free. She took along another bottle for evidence and came back the way she came, climbing back into the coffin, out into the main chamber, through the crawlspace and back up the well.

Anyone who had tried to cross Lara Croft found out, often the hard way, that it was a mistake. Soon, so would Dan. The whole incident had been a blessing in disguise-this was the closest anyone had come to breaking up the Wu Lang. A quick call to an Interpol contact later and the "untraceable" cargo plane carrying the remains of Emperor Miraha was ordered to land, or get shot down. Of course, considering the treasure onboard, nobody had any intentions of shooting down the plane. The plane eventually made a forced landing in Istanbul, where everyone was captured and taken for interrogation.

Either the whole puzzle was too easy, or Lady Croft was just too smart.

Back in the Miraha Desert, Lara sat in the trailer, a glass of wine in her hand. Surely a step up from Lucozade, she thought to herself. "And so ends another day," she smiled. "Still alive."

And that's all that mattered.


End file.
